A conventional cell-selection process for a wireless device (WD), such as, but not limited to, a mobile station (MS), a User Equipment (UE), machine-to-machine (M2M) device, or customer premises equipment (CPE), in a Third Generation Partnership Project Long Term Evolution (3GPP LTE) based communications network involves the wireless device to identify a suitable cell in the network to connect to, or camp on. Such a conventional cell-selection process is a time- and power-consuming procedure. From the physical layer (PHY) standpoint, a suitable cell provides an optimal or a nearly optimal received signal quality, such as a maximum Received Signal Strength (RSS) or a maximum Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR). To find a suitable cell for connecting to, a wireless device attempts to decode the reference signals of nearby cells using all possible Cell ID values, which may include as many as several hundreds of Cell ID values. Accordingly, the process of evaluating all possible Cell ID values consumes substantial amount of time and power resources of the wireless device.
Moreover, cell selection is not a one-time process. That is, network entry for a wireless device in an LTE-based network includes initial cell selection and regular cell re-selection attempts. During initial cell selection, the wireless device searches for a suitable cell to initially connect to the network. The wireless device then performs regular cell re-selection attempts to determine if there is a cell having better receiving conditions than the cell to which the wireless device is currently connected. During each cell re-selection attempt, the wireless device performs a full search over all possible Cell ID values. The same process occurs for each handover event in which a new target cell is selected. The cell re-selection occurs more often with increasing wireless device mobility and with increasing numbers lower-power nodes deployments, such as pico-cells, femto-cells, etc., in which a typical cell size is relatively smaller than the size of a macro cell.
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